A computer system generally includes a central processing unit (CPU), a volatile main storage device such as a random access memory (RAM), and a nonvolatile auxiliary storage device. An example of known auxiliary storage devices is a hard disk drive (HDD). In the computer system, swap information and dump information are stored in an auxiliary storage device such as a hard disk drive. Specifically, in the computer system, among programs and processes loaded on the main storage device, currently-unused programs and processes are temporarily migrated to the auxiliary storage device. A region in the main storage device which has been occupied by the currently-unused programs and processes migrated to the auxiliary storage device is released as a storage region usable in the computer system. Also, in the computer system, all the data in the main storage device are stored in the auxiliary storage device as dump information in order to use the data, for example, for analyzing a failure when the failure occurs in the computer system.
For computer systems, various kinds of techniques are proposed to efficiently perform processing using the swap information and the dump information. For example, there is a technique that increases speed of processing of information relating to dump information that is temporarily saved in a saving area in order to load the dump information into an auxiliary storage device at a rebooting operation. In this technique for increasing the speed of the processing of the information relating to the dump information, coupling between a group of RAMs serving as transfer sources and a group of RAMs serving as transfer destinations is switched when the dump information is temporarily saved in order to load the dump information into an auxiliary storage device, so that the time desired for saving the dump information is reduced. In addition, there is another technique that reduces a time of processing that copies information between auxiliary storage devices such as HDDs. In this technique for reducing the time of the processing for copying the information between the auxiliary storage devices, only a region is copied which is to be used for an operation of the computer system based on a use state and a purpose registered in advance for each region in the auxiliary storage device, so that the copying time is reduced. Related art documents include Japanese Laid-open Patent Publications No. 5-40675 and No. 11-296419.